General tips
A little bonus Now and then, there are flying birds across the screen. Some of them carry a bag. Tapping them brings you an additional 3 coins and 1 food. Also, on occasion there is a mole that pops up out of a random spot on the ground. Tapping it brings you an additional 1 gold coin. Tapping it a second time brings you an additional 2 gold coins. Tapping it a third time brings you additional 3 gold coins. Total 6 gold coins. Getting rich fast Build all three Wooden Houses at the beginning and upgrade them to level 4 before following the quests. That way you will always have enough money to plant food or build new buildings. Also upgrade the Research Station to level 3 at minimum if not level 4 to max out all "free coins" that you can get. When the other houses become available at certain player levels, buy and upgrade those. The Megusta idol also produces gold. Upgrading the idol shortens the time between collections rather than increasing the amount collected. Buy the sonar when possible. It gives 48 gold about 4x per hour in 3 piles. You need a worker to pick up the gold (it takes about 3 seconds). Buy gold producing buildings from the store with neighbour heart coins and dubloons from the store. The native shop also has gold producing buildings. Don't forget to collect the gold! Once you have more gold coming in than you can use, think about getting experience gaining buildings from the various stores instead. Make space whenever possible If you need wood, clear thorns or chop trees rather than using the Sawmill. The advantage is that although the wood costs more food, you can use the free space for new buildings. Also, each cleared spot brings some experience points. You can also pick up wood from clearing windbreaks, dried-up trees, palm trees. Similarly, you pick up stone from rock piles, ruined houses, columns, half-columns, etc. When you need resources that can be obtained by clearing, it is better to pay the additional food and clear the land rather than use a building or limitless plant as you get two tasks done. Build in advance If you produce something in a building you will have to collect it when it is finished. To save time and Warehouse storage space, start production but do not collect. That way the product will be ready when needed and does not need storage. Collecting from a building like this also does not require any workers. The fourth worker - David the Scientist David is a scientist who becomes available as a worker during the main quest. Keep pushing the main quest at the beginning. After you blast the spider cave, you will get to deal with Weiss at his radio shack where he has you buy a hearing aid battery for Diana who lost her hearing, and then have to clear some windbreaks. The web itself is at the Liberators quest which gives 70 stars as a reward. All of this takes place just north of the corner of the pyramid. In the original version, the game started with four workers and this quest yielded a fifth. But currently players begin with two workers, adding Diana as the third during the tutorial, so that David would become the fourth worker (or fifth, if you also bought the in-game extra worker). Occasionally the game offers an extra worker as an archipelligo prize. Once you have enough gold coming in, an additional worker is a great benefit, so do your best to get additional workers to help build you up faster. See Equivalent Cost for a basic understanding of how additional worker can help you. Go to the limit If you need a type of building, try to build as many of them as possible. That way you will be able to work further in advance. And your island ranking will increase with every building. Upgrade your Infrastructure This "quest" also lets you logically build up and upgrade your buildings when they are going to be useful. Just follow their instructions, with some exception for houses as those you'll want to build up as soon as you can. During the game will be asked to buy a Buoy, Lantern, Trap, Windmill, Breakwater, Solar Panel, Lighthouse, Submarine, and Lounge Chair. You will then be asked to upgrade these items in the same order, a bit at a time. The upgraded items will produce XP stars faster. You can also pre-plan on the next upgrade(s) as they generally require the same amount of resources regardless of current level. Keep all workers busy Obviously, if all your workers are at work at all times you will progress faster. Try to have at least 1 worker producing food. If you are going to do the timed quests on the other islands, you may need 1 worker available so don't lock all your workers on long-term tasks. Do jobs at once You will often get a quest like "Remove x whatever". Checkout what one removal needs then gather all resources needed for all x removals. When ready, do all x removal at once. This way you will have more workers up gathering resources, which is faster than clearing each one at a time. Watch a Video (mobile app) If you are playing Island Experiment on a mobile app, you may occasionally get options to Watch a Video to cut the processing time of a task by up to 10 minutes. For example, the 15-minute Vegetable Patch will complete in 5 minutes. These activate on tasks that take at least 1.5 minutes, and will consume your WiFi or cellular data. You can also click on an existing task on the left-hand side and apply the 10 minutes there, or select the video at the Market to speed up some chests. The Watch a Video option lasts for about 3-8 videos. Also, like the occasional flying bird, there may be a balloon that flies around that drops goodies if you watch the video. Visit Facebook If you play Island Experiment on Facebook, you'll want to go to the Island Experiment game page https://www.facebook.com/IslandExperiment/ to get some occasional goodies such as Coins or Food that are posted daily or sooner. There is also the Island Experiment Official Group page which may have goodies if they aren't posted in the first link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/IslandExperiment.OfficialGroup/ Follow the main quest The main quest will continue to feed you tasks to do, so it is a good guideline on how to proceed. There's one about accessing the Pyramid (reward 100 XP), but it won't be resolved until most of the areas around the pyramid are completed. There's also a building infrastructure quest that helps you logically place new buildings and upgrades. At some point after meeting Mumumba, you get offered a bonus quest involving collecting from the Mustard Bush that should open up some areas. The Warehouse and Golden dragon upgrading tasks are disguised as quests, but they are actually long-term ones that are on its own path (e.g. You've upgraded Warehouse to level 5? Great, now you get to upgrade to level 6) The Warehouse one steadily boosts your storage capacity, but the Golden dragon one just boosts your island's beauty rating with a few eventual prizes at higher levels. The good thing is that none of these particular quests have the time limits. Quests away from island You may occasionally be asked to start timed quests on another chain of islands. Usually that just requires one worker, although some quests have their own worker. Be sure to collect the resources that are released regularly during those timed quests, especially the "Free gifts" and the ones that replenish your food and items that are consumed by encountering obstacles. If you are going for the 3-star rating or trying to finish all the quests within the islands, you may have to spend gems or real money to fully resupply your food or add packs of items. These quests are good for collecting currency such as Doubloons and Stamps to buy more decorative items that generate XP and Gold. Helping your friends You can try to send specific items to your friends based on their wishlist (it takes the item out of your inventory), although it may be difficult to tell if it went through. You can send some Friendship Coins (the ones that look like hearts) to some of your friends who play; and receive Friendship Coins, 10 per person, 250 max coins per day. Visiting their island doesn't do anything useful although you can see a small section of how they are building theirs up assuming they are not set to decorative island. Clearing the Fog Most of the island is covered in fog. To gain access to other parts of the island you will need to complete quests. This will lead you to other parts of the island that will then become less foggy. The Green Move Button Use the green move button to move many types of your buildings around. This button can be found on the lower left of your screen. * Click the button. ** Once the button is on the buildings you can move will be fully coloured while things you cannot move will be greyed out. * Click and drag a building to a new location. Put buildings with a similar function together to make it easier on yourself. * e.g. put all your gold-producing buildings together in one location; * your food-producing buildings in another location; * your resource producing buildings in a third, etc. Grouping your similar functioning buildings together will make it easier for you to do what you want. Consider what you make a lot of What resources do you spend getting all the time? e.g. Shovels. You use shovels to get iron from the caves. You use the iron to make pick-axe and axes. Make sure you have all 3 workshop buildings so that you can make shovels quickly. Which cave gives the best iron? Figure it out for yourself and make the game easier by considering what you need in advance of when you actually need it. By planning ahead, you can make the game faster and more enjoyable. What to dig in the caves? Inside the caves you dig up various different objects. The rewards they give vary from cave to cave, but in a single type of cave they are reasonably consistent. Look at what it is each object gives you (try hoving your mouse over them). Is it worthwhile to spend a shovel to dig it up? Sometimes you cannot avoid this as you would otherwise be blocked from exploring further in the cave, but many times you can avoid digging up the low-paying items that are stuck in the end of tunnels or are in wider parts of the cave.